12Oct14

U.S. Troops to Use Bases in Turkey

Turkey will allow American and coalition troops to use its bases, including a
key installation within 100 miles of the Syrian border, for operations against
Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq, Defense Department officials said
Sunday.

Obama administration officials have urged the Turkish government to play a
more significant role in fighting the extremists who have seized large parts of
Iraq and Syria and driven refugees into Turkey.

An American military team will arrive in Turkey this week to work out details of
the training program and discuss what kind of missions can be flown from the
Turkish bases, administration officials said.

The basing and training agreement follows two days of talks in Ankara, the
Turkish capital, between the authorities there and John R. Allen, the retired
American general who is coordinating the coalition's response to the Islamic
State. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has been traveling in South
America, has said the United States has sought access to Turkish air bases,
including one at Incirlik in southern Turkey.

The initial breakthrough with Turkey came as three suicide bombers attacked a
government center in Diyala Province, northeast of Baghdad, killing 60 people
and wounding more than 120, officials said. Many of the victims were people
who had sought refuge in the district, Qara Taba, after fleeing violence
elsewhere in the country, officials said. They had gathered at the government
center to collect subsidies for displaced people.

Earlier in the day, the police chief of Anbar Province in western Iraq was killed
when two bombs planted along a rural road were detonated as his convoy
drove by, officials said. Anbar officials said the death of the chief, Maj. Gen.
Ahmed Saddag, was a setback to the efforts of the Iraqi security forces to
wrest full control of the province from the jihadist insurgency called the Islamic
State.

Iraqi forces have been struggling to push the Islamic State fighters from
territory they captured this year. The group, also known as ISIS or ISIL, first
made inroads in Iraq at the beginning of the year when it swept from Syria
into Anbar Province and quickly seized control of territory throughout the
Euphrates River valley, from the Syrian border to the rural western suburbs of
the Baghdad area.

In June, another wave of fighters poured across the Syrian border into
northern Iraq, quickly overwhelming Iraqi security forces in the city of Mosul.
They have since expanded their control across areas of northern and central
Iraq.

Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, President Obama's top military adviser, said Sunday
that no circumstances had yet arisen that warranted recommending the limited
use of American ground troops as advisers in combat conditions. But, during
an interview on ABC's "This Week," he added, "There will be circumstances
when the answer to that question will likely be yes."

He went on to suggest that a counterattack to retake Mosul in the north might
require such "a different kind of advising and assisting."

The three-pronged attack Sunday in Qara Taba, northeast of Baquba near the
Iranian border, targeted the mayor's office, a building used by the internal
security service of the Kurdistan regional government and an office of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the main Kurdish political parties,
according to Rudaw, a Kurdish news agency.

The first of three bombers set off his explosives at the compound's gates. He
was quickly followed by two other attackers driving cars loaded with
explosives, which were detonated at the compound's entrance, officials said.
Qara Taba is close to Jalawla, where Islamic State fighters have been battling
Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters. Among the dead were 15 Kurdish fighters,
Rudaw reported.

The attack that killed General Saddag in Anbar occurred in Albu Risha, west of
Ramadi, the provincial capital. Three of General Saddag's bodyguards were
also killed, said a staff member of a provincial council member, who requested
anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

[Source: By Eric Schmitt and Kirk Semple, The New York Times, 12Oct14]

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